And he appealed for lawmakers to face the approaching deadlines with greater calm and the sense of bipartisanship they managed to achieve on New Year's Day.
Crouching in the gloom, unable to talk, waiting for an animal that never appears sounds like a particularly dismal country pursuit but badger watching is peculiarly thrilling – an experience that fills the watcher with great calm and, occasionally, a rush of exhilaration.
Considering Mr. Sarkozy's penchant for overstatement and excess, the Obama administration has reacted with great calm, apparently confident that the issue of the dollar's singular role can be successfully kicked into the tall weeds of op-ed articles and think-tank-type conferences for years to come.
"We can turn our attention with greater calm to domestic challenges and promote the necessary changes," Prime Minister George A. Papandreou said, according to Reuters.
With great calm and dignity, Adi sets out the facts, and then he — and we — have to listen to good deal of sub-Nuremberg bluster about obeying orders, or a sort of introspective silence, perhaps indicating the glimmerings of conscience or a strategic retreat into Alzheimer's.
As far as the treatment of marginalized communities is concerned, Charlie Hebdo applies a double standard with great calm.
But Djokovic does everything a tiny bit better, and with greater calm.
"I had been playing with great calm and was really in a perfect relaxed state of mind -- the kind of feeling you get all too rarely," Bradshaw said later, referring to his demeanor before the shot from the bottle.
The nearer one gets to the scene of danger, it seems, the greater the calm becomes.
This change, I think, is one expression of the great cultural calming that began with the end of the cold war, when even the more interesting aspects of popular culture began to lose their insurrectionary charge.
